So Canon has announced that they intend to apply for the .canon top-level domain a little bit over a month ago. They state that

“With the adoption of the new gTLD system, which enables the direct utilization of the Canon brand, Canon hopes to globally integrate open communication policies that are intuitive and easier to remember compared with existing domain names such as ‘canon.com,’”

I can not believe that they are saying they intend to create a url more memorable and directly associated with their company than 'canon.com'! I’m guessing that the main matter of concern is marketing their brand, but I think that is already pretty well done with the current system. Using Canon as an example, their brand, ‘Canon’, is blatantly displayed in their company’s url canon.com. And the .com domain is the most widely used and recognized in the entire world. What could possibly be easier to remember? They couldn’t possibly be thinking of using home.canon or something of the like as their homepage url? My lack of creativity might be preventing me from realizing some spiffy url that Canon can use, but I just can’t bring myself to imagine myself typing in unique domains for every webpage that I visit.

Disclaimer: Excuse me for not reading through ICANN’s 255 page draft on Applicant Guidelines. You’ll just have to tell me if any of my concerns have already been addressed.
My own personal dissatisfaction aside, how does ICANN plan to manage the application process? Will there be an exclusivity of domain names that companies register for (I’m pretty sure there will be)? Where do they intend to draw the line; will non-business types like =3 be allowed to register their own domain? Will there be a fee? Will people who have registered their own top-level domain have to pay for each individual web domain they use?

Honestly, I really don’t know where this is going and I think it will be interesting to see how things turn out.

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As a side note, I wrote this post in code and not in Tumblr’s posting interface. This is my practice to get used to writing in code. Though I don’t know if it will help.